California

Agencies Get Reprieve on City Funding

Los Angeles' Workforce Investment Board gave a reprieve Tuesday to a group of nonprofit job-training agencies that faced a loss of city funding, agreeing to study the matter further and decide within four weeks whether to give the agencies more time to comply with new quality standards.

The organizations--CHARO Community Development Corp., Pacific Asian Consortium in Employment, Casa de Hermandad and Advanced Computing Institute--failed a two-year certification process designed to improve the quality and consistency of service delivered by the centers citywide.

The WIB, a city-appointed private-sector board, chose to certify the groups using a process for measuring quality improvement that is favored by the private sector. Though 12 nonprofits passed, the four that did not alleged that the process was inconsistently applied and did not take their performance records into adequate consideration.

The board's executive committee convened the special meeting in response to a City Council action Friday that asked the board to spare the long-standing community groups.

CHARO, PACE and Casa de Hermandad stand to lose at least $1.6million each in annual city funding if the decision not to certify them stands.

Charlie Woo, president of Megatoys and chairman of the WIB and its executive committee, said city staff and the WIB's certification subcommittee will review the concerns and report back within four weeks.

"The sentiment is leaning toward giving them some more time to help them certify," Woo said, although he added that the board still must examine more detailed information on how poorly the organizations fared and whether they have performed strongly in recent years.

The groups had been scheduled to appeal the decision not to certify them at a Thursday hearing in front of a city and WIB panel. But that hearing now has been postponed and no new date has been set.